Quotes & Sayings About Parades

The less we parade our misfortunes the more sympathy we command. — Orville Dewey

A heroic act is not always followed by glory and parades and forever freedom," she said. "It's often small, disregarded, or forgotten. But it matters. — Shannon A. Thompson

The majority of us lead quiet, unheralded lives as we pass through this world. There will most likely be no ticker-tape parades for us, no monuments created in our honor. But that does not lessen our possible impact, for there are scores of people waiting for someone just like us to come along; people who will appreciate our compassion, our unique talents. Someone who will live a happier life merely because we took the time to share what we had to give. Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have a potential to turn a life around. It's overwhelming to consider the continuous opportunities there are to make our love felt. — Leo Buscaglia

One unlikelihood entertained leads a parade of innovation. — Mary Anne Radmacher

Maj Thapa rose to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel and served till he retired. He continued to attend almost all the Republic Day parades from 1964 to 2004. Sick and undergoing dialysis for kidney failure in Delhi, Lt Col Thapa would slip in and out of consciousness in his last year. Poornima, who was taking care of him, pleaded with him to not attend the parade that year, but he refused gently yet firmly. 'When I wear my uniform and go for the parade, I represent my soldiers; those men who fought a war with me. I cannot let them down,' he told her. Though he could hardly stand for long or even stay alert, he put on his uniform, pinned on his PVC, tilted his Gorkha hat at the perfect angle and went for the parade, remembers Poornima. Through sheer willpower, he managed to stand in the jeep till he had saluted the President. After that, he sat down. That would be the last Republic Day parade he would attend. On 5 September 2005, Lt Col Thapa died of kidney failure. He was 77 years old. — Rachna Bisht

I can't stop being in parades. I just love dancing on floats that move really slowly on the city streets in the early morning. — Chris Kattan

Now you watch the parades and processions of hopeful and despairing people walking outside your tomb. They are all looking for the answer to the problem you know so well. — Lynette Fromme

The greatest gap in sports is between the winner and the loser of the Super Bowl. The winner has confetti, parades, rings, the whole thing. The loser puts his head down and goes to his house. — John Madden

I listen to music every day for study reasons, and I confess that I have very little knowledge of what is going on in the hit parades around the world. I have no prejudices for any kind of music genre, and I listen with pleasure to many songs on the radio that my children already know of by heart, while I hear them practically for the first time. — Andrea Bocelli

I'll let you in on a secret, honey. The knight who has serious chinks in his armor but never falls is the true hero. That means he's won battles and doesn't waste time polishing his armor so he can look good while he rides in parades that are tributes to his glory. He just drags himself back on his steed and keeps right on battling. And if he's the right kind of knight, he never rides alone. The best heroes inspire loyalty. The best heroes keep fighting the good fight, tirelessly, quietly. The best heroes always have scars. If they didn't, the heroine would have nothing to do. It's her job to help the hero let all that stuff go in order that her man can be strong enough to fight on but when he's with her he's free to just 'breathe'. — Kristen Ashley

The utilitarian argument against fiestas, parades, carnivals, and general public merriment is that they produce nothing. But they do: they produce society. They renew the reasons why we might want to belong and the feeling that we do. — Rebecca Solnit

All I can see when I look at him is a belt swinging toward Tobias, and the butt of a gun slamming into Caleb's jaw. I don't care that he hurt Caleb
I would have done it, too
but that he is simultaneously a man who knows how to hurt people and a man who parades around as the self-effacing leader of Abnegation, suddenly makes me so angry I can't see straight.
Especially because I chose him. I chose him over Tobias.
"Your brother is a traitor," says Marcus as we turn a corner. "He deserved worse. There's no need to look at me that way."
"Shut up!" I shout, shoving him hard into the wall. He is too surprised to push back. "I hate you, you know that! I hate you for what you did to him, and I am not talking about Caleb." I lean close to his face and whisper, "And while I may not shoot you myself, I will definitely not help you if someone tries to kill you, so you'd better hope to God we don't get into that situation. — Veronica Roth

Smiles, bells, parades, horses, bleh. If so, please add an orgy. If an orgy would help, don't hesitate. — Ursula K. Le Guin

There now. Just look at what your grandpa did to that poor old nigger." "Yes," I said. "Now he can spend day after day marching in parades. If it hadn't been for my grandfather, he'd have to work like whitefolks. — William Faulkner

When the soldiers came home from Vietnam, there were no parades, no celebrations. So they built the Vietnam Memorial for themselves. — William Westmoreland

A debilitating absence of government machinery was compounded by White failure in the realm of ideas. Red propaganda effectively stamped the Whites as military adventurists, lackeys of foreign powers, restorationists. The Whites mounted their own propaganda, military parades, and troop reviews blessed by Orthodox priests. Their red, white, and blue flags, the national colors of pre-1917 Russia, often had images of Orthodox saints; others had skulls and crossbones. The Whites copied the Bolshevik practice of the agitation trains. But their slogans - "Let us be one Russian people" - did not persuade. — Stephen Kotkin

Within loyalism and the UVF, there are clearly people who are not just aggravated by the issue around flags or parades. They're aggravated by me and Sinn Fein being in government. They're opposed to the political institutions - there's an inability of a minority within loyalism to accept the concept of equality. — Martin McGuinness

Daisy loved all parades, especially this one, whose crush of observers, prone to impulsive kisses, made it one more piece of the mistletoe under which she lived her life — Thomas Mallon

Why am I begging you, who parades your suffering over the ruins like a king in order to ensure that you will never be touched deeply, you who're always laughing. — Kathy Acker

Bass bands, flags, banners, parades, and monster demonstrations are no different in principle from ecclesiastical processions, cannonades, and fireworks to scare off demons. Only, the suggestive parade of State power engenders a collective feeling of security which, unlike religious demonstrations, give the individual no protection against his inner demonism. Hence he will cling all the more to the power of the State, i.e., to the mass, thus delivering himself up to it psychically as well as morally and putting the finishing touch to his social depotentiation. The State, like the Church, demands enthusiasm, self-sacrifice, and love, and if religion requires or presupposes the "fear of God," then the dictator State takes good care to provide the necessary terror. — C. G. Jung

It will be celebrated ... with pomp and parade ... bonfires and illuminations from one end of this continent to the other. — John Adams

One of the many reasons I love living in New York is that we get a front row seat to the innumerable thrills that take place here - from conventions and awards shows, to parades and U.N. assemblies. But my favorite New York tradition is the annual New Year's Eve ball-drop on Times Square. — Marlo Thomas

As I started to pursue the subject more deeply I realized that walking was this wonderful meandering path through everything I was already interested in - gender politics, public space and urban life, demonstrations and parades and marches. The relationship between walking and thinking and between the mind and the body. — Rebecca Solnit

I believe in life. And I have seen the death parade — Assata Shakur

The absolutist parades his good solid grounding in observation, reason, objectivity, truth and fact; the relativist sees only fetishes. — Simon Blackburn

The true man neither guiltily conceals nor anxiously explains nor vulgarly parades. — Clarence Darrow

Even a two-car parade gets fouled up if you don't decide ahead of time who's going to lead. — Zig Ziglar

Parades ain't for the people on the floats, they're for the ones watching it go by. — Alex Bledsoe

Military parades roll down the Champs-Elysees, but pedestrians stroll up ["East Meets West on the Champs-Elysees," Metropolis, March 2006, p73] — Veronique Vienne

To be content, horse people need only a horse, or, lacking that, someone else who loves horses with whom they can talk. It was always that way with my grandfather. He took me places just so we could see horses, be near them. We went to the circus and the rodeo at Madison Square Garden. We watched parades down Fifth Avenue. Finding a horse, real or imagined, was like finding a dab of magic potion that enlivened us both. Sometimes I'd tell my grandfather about all the horses in my eleborate dreams. He'd lean over, smile, and assure me that, one day, I'd have one for real. And if my grandfather, my Opa, told me something was going to come true, it always did. — Allan J. Hamilton

The oldest of the service branches, the Army as an insitution has maintained the protocol, customs, and courtesies of a bygone era. At their best these can be an indearing salute to the past: The gracious homes, the parades and pageantry, the patriotic speeches, the uniforms and balls are all throwbacks to a simpler, more innocent time. — Tanya Biank

The hatred for ex-soldiers on the part of those who had not fought was something I could not understand. They wanted us to disappear. There were no more parades now, no more kisses on the cheek. Soldiers were no more than beggars, and nobody likes a beggar. Perhaps we made them feel guilty by our presence. They might have preferred it had we all died in the mud and been buried far from England in places whose names we had not even learned to pronounce properly before we perished. — John Connolly

War for most men is not fighting or marching in parades. It is sitting around somewhere wondering what the hell you are supposed to be doing. — Art Buchwald

Parade your pallor in iniquity. — Pete Townshend

It is a species of coquetry to make a parade of never practising it. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Pay attention to when the cart is getting before the horse. Notice when a painful initiation leads to irrational devotion, or when unsatisfying jobs start to seem worthwhile. Remind yourself pledges and promises have power, as do uniforms and parades. Remember in the absence of extrinsic rewards you will seek out or create intrinsic ones. Take into account [that] the higher the price you pay for your decisions the more you value them. See that ambivalence becomes certainty with time. Realize that lukewarm feelings become stronger once you commit to a group, club, or product. Be wary of the roles you play and the acts you put on, because you tend to fulfill the labels you accept. Above all, remember the more harm you cause, the more hate you feel. The more kindness you express, the more you come to love those you help. — Anonymous

Raining on parades requires no skill or effort on the part of a politician. — P. J. O'Rourke

Never let the guy with the broom decide how many elephants can be in the parade. — Merlin Mann

I have a rule: Anything that can be done privately does not need to be performed publicly. It's why I love the gays but I hate their parades. Actually, I hate all parades. Marching to celebrate something you're born as seems silly. (As I write this, St. Patrick's Day is in full bore in Midtown. It's delightful how celebrating a heritage requires you to pick fights with strangers and then pee in a parking garage. The upside - the sea of clover-painted drunks moving in unison - might be the only green energy I've ever seen work.) And what's the point of a parade anyway? A bunch of yahoos who share some affinity, walking in one direction? Who decided this was entertainment? For previous generations, this was called a migration, or more often, refugees fleeing for their lives — Greg Gutfeld

Soldier and civilian, they died in their tens of thousands because death had been concocted for them, morality hitched like a halter round the warhorse so that we could talk about 'target-rich environments' and 'collateral damage' - that most infantile of attempts to shake off the crime of killing - and report the victory parades, the tearing down of statues and the importance of peace.
Governments like it that way. They want their people to see war as a drama of opposites, good and evil, 'them' and 'us', victory or defeat. But war is primarily not about victory or defeat but about death and the infliction of death. It represents a total failure of the human spirit. — Robert Fisk

Men tell stories. Women get on with it. For us it was a shadow war. There were no parades for us when it was over, no medals or mentions in history books. We did what we had to during the war, and when it was over, we picked up the pieces and started our lives over. — Kristin Hannah

All progressive thought has assumed tacitly that human beings desire nothing beyond ease, security and avoidance of pain ... Hitler, because in his joyless mind he feels it with exceptional strength, knows that human beings don't only want comfort, safety, short working-hours, hygiene, birth-control and, in general, common sense; they also, at least intermittently, want struggle and self-sacrifice, not to mention drums, flags and loyalty-parades. However they may be as economic theories, Fascism and Nazism are psychologically far sounder than any hedonistic conception of life. — George Orwell

I want to be so famous that drag queens will dress like me in parades when I'm dead. — Laura Kightlinger

One of the biggest gaps in sports is the difference between the winning and losing teams of the Super Bowl. They don't invite the losing team to the White House. They don't have parades for them. They don't throw confetti on them. — John Madden

He looked like something that had gotten loose from Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. — Harpo Marx

The goblins of the city may hold committees to divide a single potato, but the strong and the cruel still sit on the hill, and drink vodka, and wear black furs, and slurp borscht by the pail, like blood. Children may wear through their socks marching in righteous parades, but Papa never misses his wine with supper. Therefore, it is better to be strong and cruel than to be fair. At least, one eats better that way. And morality is more dependent on the state of one's stomach than of one's nation. — Catherynne M Valente

I won't be in gay parades - I don't think they need them. I believe in class - I believe that people should have a bit of class about them. — Tammy Faye Bakker

I started off playing by ear, and being around a bunch of musicians and playing in the streets and in the different parades and, then, I got accepted to go to New Orleans Center for Creative Artists ... it's where Wynton Marsalis, Harry Connick, Jr. and all those guys went out. — Troy Andrews

We see North Koreans as automatons, goose-steeping at parades, doing mass gymnastics with fixed smiles on their faces - but beneath all that, real life goes on with the same complexity of human emotion as anywhere else. — Barbara Demick

I enjoy raining on parades and throwing stones in glass homes. — Behdad Sami

The pulpit is a clergyman's parade; the parish is his field of active service. — Robert Southey

Speak not of guilt, speak not of responsibility. When the Regiment of the Senses parades by, with music, and with banners; when the senses shiver and shudder, it is only a fool and and an irreverent person that will keep his distance, who will not embrace the good cause, marching towards the conquest of pleasures and passions. All of morality's laws - poorly understood and applied - are nil and cannot stand even for a moment, when the Regiment of the Senses parades by, with music, and with banners. — C.P. Cavafy

The parade was here, but it disappeared around a corner. — Mason Cooley

According to tarot historian Gertrude Moakley, the cards' fanciful images - from the Fool to Death - were inspired by the costumed figures who participated in carnival parades. — Brendan I. Koerner

There are not many English novels which deserve to be called great: Parade's End is one of them. — W. H. Auden

Some have said I should demand that the surviving members of Unit 731 be brought to justice. But what does that mean? I am no longer a child. I do not want to see trials, parades, spectacles. The law does not give you real justice. — Ken Liu

She warned him that, if he got killed, she should cut down the great cedar at the south-west corner of Groby. It kept all the light out of the principal drawing-room and the bedrooms above it ... He winced: he certainly winced at that. She regretted that she had said it. It was along other lines that she desired to make him wince. — Ford Madox Ford

Homosexuality is a cause, much like a religion. What is the philosophy behind gay pride parades? The same philosophy that there is behind Muslim demonstrations! Show of force and promotion of the ethos! Homosexuals promote their lifestyle much like religionists promote their religion. I suppose they realize that the bigger is their number, the more political clout they can wield. — Ali Sina

It is as heroic as he makes it sound. "Why have I never heard anything about all this - and not just from you? Sophie never said a word. Hell, I didn't even know that people escaped over the mountains or that there was a concentration camp just for women who resisted the Nazis." "Men tell stories," I say. It is the truest, simplest answer to his question. "Women get on with it. For us it was a shadow war. There were no parades for us when it was over, no medals or mentions in history books. We did what we had to during the war, and when it was over, we picked up the pieces and started our lives over. Your sister was as desperate to forget it as I was. Maybe that was another mistake I made - letting her forget. Maybe we should have talked about it. — Kristin Hannah

There is nothing like a parade to elicit the proper respect for the military from the populace. — Irving Kristol

That monstrosity you honour with your name - which is also mine, thank you! — Ford Madox Ford

Sometimes it takes more than shouting it to show your pride. It takes more than a sign, a fabulous outfit, or a month of parades. Pride has to resonate from within; shine out to everyone around you. It has mean something to you and only you first before you announce it to the world. — Solange Nicole

We were in Chagrin Falls, Ohio. It's a nice town, but it's aggressively quaint. They've got a popcorn shop above a waterfall and parades that come through town. It's all-American. — Nick Robinson

Parades should be classed as a Nuisance and participants should be subject to a term in prison. They stop more work, inconvenience more people, stop more traffic, cause more accidents, entail more expense, and commit and cause I don't remember the other hundred misdemeanors. — Will Rogers

It's always the generals with the bloodiest records who are the first to shout what a hell it is. And it's always the war widows who lead the Memorial Day parades. — Paddy Chayefsky

It is unacceptable that disabled veterans in Illinois rank at the bottom of the list when it comes to disability pay. We owe our disabled veterans more than speeches, parades and monuments. — Dick Durbin

Parades terrify me," Max piped up.
Jason nodded in understanding and slid the champagne toward him and Reid.
"Parades?" I couldn't help but ask. "Really?"
Max shot me a look of terror. "The clowns are allowed out of their tiny cars, Colton. Have you ever even been to a parade? They hand candy and balloons to small children and have permanent smiles on their faces. No one" - he shuddered - "should have a permanent smile. — Rachel Van Dyken

I'm not a very shy person. I'm just somebody who's got a lot of work and who doesn't like to parade himself in new celebrity contexts. — Alan Moore

The struggle for power had reached a new stage; it was fought with scientific formulas. The weapons vanished in the abyss like fleeting images, like pictures one throws into the fire ...
When new models were displayed to the masses at the great parades on Red Square in Moscow or elsewhere, the crowds stood in reverent silence and then broke into jubilant shouts of triumph ...
Though the display was continual, in this silence and these shouts something evil, old as time, manifested itself in man, who is an outsmarter and setter of traps. Invisible, Cain and Tubalcain marched past in the parade of phantoms. — Ernst Junger

This wasn't just an attack against the Boston Marathon ... It was an attack against the American public and our democratic use of the streets. We have used our public roadways for annual parades, protest marches, presidential inaugurations, marathons, and all manner of other events. The roads belong to us, and their use represents an important part of our free and democratic tradition. — Amby Burfoot

I wanna scream and dream and throw a love parade / Is that okay? — Janelle Monae

As a kid, I saw those ticker-tape parades in the movies, and I was really chuffed to be in one. — Rick Astley

The very principle of democracy is founded on the possibility of making alternative choices. There is no longer a need for democracy, since ideology made the idea that "there is no alternative" acceptable. Adherence to a meta-social principle of superior rationality allows for the elimination of the necessity and possibility of choosing. The so-called principle of the rationality of "markets" exactly fills this function in the ideology of obsolescent capitalism. Democratic practice is thus emptied of all content in the way is open to what I have called "low-intensity democracy" - that is, to electoral buffooneries where parades of majorettes take the place of programs, to the society of the spectacle. Delegitimized by these practices, politics is undone, begins to drift and loses its potential power to give meaning and coherence to alternative societal projects. — Samir Amin

I will not rain on people's parades with unnecessary practicalities they can figure out for themselves. — Kylie Scott

The wind outside nested in each tree, prowled the sidewalks in invisible treads like unseen cats.
Tom Skelton shivered. Anyone could see that the wind was a special wind this night, and the darkness took on a special feel because it was All Hallows' Eve. Everything seemed cut from soft black velvet or gold or orange velvet. Smoke panted up out of a thousand chimneys like the plumes of funeral parades. From kitchen windows drifted two pumpkin smells: gourds being cut, pies being baked. — Ray Bradbury

It was probably indecent to think of a corpse as impotent. But he was, very likely. That would be why his wife had taken up with the prize-fighter Red Evans Williams of Castell Goch. — Ford Madox Ford

Being a miner he sat on his heels more comfortably than on a chair — Ford Madox Ford

Elsewheres
South
The long green shutters are drawn.
Against what parades?
Closing our eyes against the sun,
We try to imagine
The darkness of an interior
Where something might still happen:
The razor lying open
On the cool marble washstand,
The drip of something
is it water?
Upon stone floors. — Donald Justice

Oh, come on. A vamp marrying a human gets the fanged ones all upset, and Eve made herself look like the ultimate fang-anger to all the humans by putting a ring on one, so what did you expect exactly? Flowers and parades? This is Texas. We're still figuring out how to spell tolerance. — Rachel Caine

But to betray her with battalion ... That is against decency, against Nature ... And for him, Christopher tietjens, to come down to the level of the men you met here! — Ford Madox Ford

I don't think I'm gay. I don't think I'm straight. I think I'm just slutty. Where's my parade? — Margaret Cho

I believe that the Hurricane Katrina was, in fact, the judgment of God against the city of New Orleans ... I believe that New Orleans had a level of sin that was offensive to God, and they are - were recipients of the judgment of God for that ... There was to be a homosexual parade there on the Monday that the Katrina came. And the promise of that parade was that it was going to reach a level of sexuality never demonstrated before in any of the other Gay Pride parades ... The Bible teaches that when you violate the law of God, that God brings punishment sometimes before the day of judgment. — John Hagee

Parades are man's attempt to make traffic exciting. — Demetri Martin

The indispensability of play-acting in the grim business of dying and killing is particularly evident in the case of armies. Their uniforms, flags, emblems, parades, music, and elaborate etiquette and ritual are designed to separate the soldier from his flesh-and-blood self and mask the overwhelming reality of life and death. — Eric Hoffer

When you're on top and you lead the parade, everyone's there throwing lilies and lilac water on your head. But when those parades have gone by and there's a storm in your heart, there are very few people that are going to sit there and listen to you bemoan life. — Sylvester Stallone

Their notion of training was to march the men up and down in parades and reviews: these were nice to look at and gave them the impression of military discipline and precision, but as a preparation for a modern war they had no value whatsoever. — Orlando Figes

Best Friends: we're a parade - even by ourselves! — Mary Anne Radmacher

Language is the apparel in which your thoughts parade before the public. — George W. Crane

And so the greatest of American triumphs ... became a peculiarly joyless victory. We had won the Cold War, but there would be no parades. — Robert M. Gates

The second type you have at these parades seems to be the people who want to mislabel Hitler. Everybody in the world is Hitler. Bush is Hitler, Ashcroft is Hitler, Rumsfeld is Hitler. The only guy who isn't Hitler is the foreign guy with a mustache dropping people who disagree with him into the wood chipper. He's not Hitler. — Dennis Miller

But always, at moments when his mind was like a blind octopus, squirming in an agony of knife-cuts, she would drop in that accusation. — Ford Madox Ford

Poetry is a string of words that parades without a permit. — Linda Hogan

I rode on a float in one of the parades in Mississippi. It's an experience. — Elliott Smith

When I've ridden in parades, I always throw to the kids, the elderly and anyone who is smiling and having a great time. I try to make eye contact with the person. If you catch a ton and a kid nearby hasn't caught much, share. — Bryan Batt

... my words are love
which willfully parades in
its room, refusing to move. — Frank O'Hara

A good crowd had formed along the sidewalk and the concrete ledge that bordered Louis Armstrong Park. The anticipation was dizzying...New Orleans had the big-boy parades and [Jackson & Billy] couldn't wait to attend a second line... — Hunter Murphy

Harrison, Arkansas, a town of 12,000, which is over 90% White, has a 'Task Force On Race Relations', and elected city officials invite the NAACP in from the other (black) end of the state to hold parades and bury caskets labeled 'racism'. — Billy Roper

Don't feel embarrassed if you've never heard of William Lane Craig. He parades himself as a philosopher, but none of the professors of philosophy whom I consulted had heard his name, either. — Richard Dawkins

The best way we can honor the pioneers - the best way for us to repay our debt of gratitude to them - goes beyond making and hearing speeches, marching in parades, or attending fireworks celebrations.
The best way we can show our gratitude is by incorporating into our own lives the faithfulness to God's commandments, the compassion and love for our fellowmen, the industry, optimism, and joy the pioneers demonstrated so well in their own lives. — President Dieter F. Uchtdorf

A Queens Shilling

A Queens shilling taken in faith, service given without question
Comrades fallen in foreign fields, now I return home again
Parades and medals a countries thanks, crowds cheering looks of respect
Now I sit upon a cold pavement, broken and lost a victim of neglect — David McDonald